04. Are You a Bad Person? ☠️☠️☠️
~*~Take this personality test and find out~*~
Welcome to the Great Job Nat™ Sunday Newsletter! You can read it, listen to my VoiceOver of it (above, best to do so with headphones) or BOTH. Most readers here are paid subscribers, so if you’re a freebie, I LOVE YOU but if you want access to Great Job art, comics, tickets to comedy shows, etc. consider leveling up here xoxo <3
POP QUIZ: Are You a Bad Person?!
Tally your points based on the prompts below to find out!
Have you… stolen something from self-checkout? (+1)
Stolen something expensive from self-checkout? (+2)
Gotten in a fight with a roommate about rent? (+1)
Paid less than your share of a dinner bill? (+1)
“Forgot” to Venmo someone? (+3)
Started an argument with a significant other for NO reason? (+2)
Shoplifted from CVS? (+1)
“But, but all I stole was a Chapstick!” How dare you try to get out of this. (+5)
Yelled at your mom? (+2)
Drank too much? (+1)
Murdered someone? (+10)
Attempted to murder someone? (+8)
Murdered someone extremely graphically in your imagination? (+3)
Watched the show Dahmer and thought, I identify with that guy? (+5)
Cancelled plans last minute for no reason? (+1)
Slapped a dog? (+2)
Pushed a sibling? (+1)
Punched a sibling? (+3)
Called someone “ugly” to their face? (+4)
Called someone “ugly” behind their back? (+3)
Walked right by a grocery store Santa without donating? (+2)
Committed treason? (+6)
Committed arson? (+5) (seems less bad than treason)
Cheated on a test? (+1)
Cheated on a person? (+2)
Did whatever “insider trading” is? (+3)
Hit and ran? (+7)
Drove drunk? (+5)
Dined and dashed? (+3)
Yelled at a baby? (+2)
Supported artists who are bad people? (+1)
Let down a friend who you should have been there for? (+4)
Great job, you bad person! You’ve completed the evaluation. Add up your score and put it in your pocket for now. We’ll come back to it at the end and decide if you’re going straight to hell! 🥰
How I (Mis)understand Karma
When Bad Things Happen, It’s All My Fault
A few things:
I don’t think I’m a bad person.
But also: I don’t think I’m not. Like. I could be better.
When bad things happen in my life, it’s not always my fault.
But also: I can always find a way to convince myself that it IS my fault.
Y’knowwhatImean?
Catholic Guilt-Free
I thought that I’d proven myself to be a Good Person once and for all in the 7th grade, in Mr. Schoenfeld’s Social Studies class. We were learning about “indulgences” sold by the Catholic Church.
Between the year 1000 and the 1500s, “indulgences” could be bought from the church to “reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for [their] sins.” (Thank you, Wikipedia, for the refresher). The sale of indulgences has long been outlawed, but way back in the day they served as a sort of get-out-of-jail-for-a-price, faux-moral coupon for penance. So what if you stole? Pillaged? Murdered? S’ok. Just pay up and get 50% off an eternity of having your skin filleted off by Satan himself.
Mr. S wanted the lesson to be immersive, so he told the class that he was going to sell indulgences to us. Not to absolve us of our sins, but to beef up our grades. For $5, you could pay to upgrade from a B minus to a B. For $5 more, you could bump that B to a B+, and so on, up to $20. He passed a print-out of the class roster around, where you could write how much you wanted to pay to raise your grade.
Time for my bright and shining moment: When the roster was passed to me, I proudly wrote a big fat $0. I don’t want your dirty money, Jesus!
I mean, I already had an A. But, still. Also: I did notice on the roster that one of my frenemies—let’s call her Kaitlyn because that’s her name—wrote $20. Which, first of all, she was Mormon (no comment, just saying) and second of all, what do you need to pay the full $20 for, Kait? You got a Z minus in this class?
Lol boom, roasted 🔥🔥🔥
This is all to say, a lot of time has passed since I dunked on the Catholic Church. Now, through the ups and downs and moral hits and misses of being an adult in this chaotic world, I’m not so sure how I’m doing on the Richter scale of Good to Bad Person. I mean, I’m fine. It’s just, okay. I have three main Bad areas:
Relationships
Money
Food
^ That’s where I get stressed, I slip up. I do mean things to others and/or myself.
I’m a questionable partner. I’m cripplingly afraid of having no money and sometimes that makes me cheap. I have an on-and-off eating disorder that makes me cranky. Ugh. I’m workin’ on it.
Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleooonnn
Now. It’s healthy to feel a bit of: “I could be better.” That’s how you grow. Mature. My problem is, that feeling often folds backwards onto itself in my broken brain, UNO-reversing into something irreconcilable, defeated:
“I could be better… so why am I not ALREADY better? It must be because I’m bad! And deserve all bad things that happen to me!”
Then, you’re just a snake eating its own tail. I’m bad so I deserve bad things because I’m bad so I deserve bad things…
Like the saying goes: ‘You reap what you sow.”
Karma is an interesting, confusing philosophy.
Because what if I reap what I sow SUPER honorably—with the most honest effort and integrity—and the seeds I’ve sown still die? What about that? Bad things happen to good people. Good things happen to bad people (see below). So how do I calibrate my own goodness based on what happens to me?
Mirriam-Webster defines Karma as: “the force generated by a person's actions held in Hinduism and Buddhism to perpetuate transmigration and in its ethical consequences to determine the nature of the person's next existence.”
Unsatisfactory. What about karma in this existence? I don’t want to know how my actions influence my next life as a fish. (Don’t ask me how I know I’m going to be a fish. You just know, sometimes.) What’s going to happen to me tomorrow?
Amongst my Googlings, I found that WebMD of all places has a page about karma. Like it’s a physical condition. Makes me think that it’s as true as cancer. Can you have terminal karma?
WebMD says: “When you see dishonest and cruel people in positions of power get ahead in life or kind people face hardships and die young, it may be hard for you to believe in karma. Many people invest in karma only in times of distress or when uncontrollable situations occur, such as a decline in health.”
I can always find my exact symptoms on WebMD, and yet. I can never find a satisfactory diagnosis. Karma seems to be no different.
Is my karma net good? Is my moral credit score in the green?
Real Quick—Do You Think Your “Bad Person Score” is Going to Be Considered Very Bad? Just Wondering.
Again: We’ll get back to your score. Just answer this prompt for now.
(*Poll closes after one week!)
The Origins of False Control
When Bad Things Happen, It’s… All My Fault?
I’ve gotten a little too good at holding myself accountable.
I police myself with an iron grip.
I hold myself accountable even when things are out of my control because it gives me a false sense of retroactive control over how the situation went because there is always, ALWAYS something I could have done better. I’m learning to loosen, but I still white-knuckle my life a little too often, as if gripping the arm rests on an airplane chair. The plane is gonna fly regardless of my tension, but I’m a little bit convinced that if I let go, it’ll drop right out of the sky.
For my flawed personality, I blame former Stanford football coach / current University of Michigan football coach / forever anal-retentoid and intense sportsdictator, Jim Harbaugh. When I played soccer at Stanford, we’d often do our weekly fitness-day on the football turf. Around the border of the field was a Harbaugh quote, spray-stenciled:
“YOU ARE GETTING BETTER OR YOU ARE GETTING WORSE YOU NEVER STAY THE SAME!”
I never double-checked to make sure Harbaugh actually said that, but I believe it.
“YOU ARE GETTING BETTER OR YOU ARE GETTING WORSE YOU NEVER STAY THE SAME” is, like, the antithesis to stillness. To meditation. Monks would be appalled. This anxiety, that if I’m not “I can be bettering,” then I’m “worsening”—it carbonates my blood. Fizzing, always.
I fantasize about going back to campus and spray-painting over those words. “YOU ARE GETTING BETTER OR YOU ARE GETTING WORSE OR SOMETIMES YOU’RE THE SAME AND ALSO STOP THINKING ABOUT BEING BETTER OR WORSE ALL THE TIME.”
Eh, a little wordy. I’ll work on it.
There Are So Many Actually Bad People in This World, Can’t You Just Chill Out an Accept that You’re Probably Pretty Decent?
I know. I’m trying. Shut up.
It’s Not (Ever) You, it’s (Always) Me
I blame myself, 💯 percent of the time.
Time to tell you a secret and that secret is: I feel bad about losing one of my best friends. He’s not dead, but our friendship is.
I can think of reasons why, on his end, he justifies not speaking to me anymore. I think that his reasons are over-reactionary, but I could never tell him that. He doesn’t have the ears to hear it. And I don’t have the desire to prove him wrong; I just want our friendship back.
Here’s what happened: He was moving from New York to LA. He was anxious about the big move and I was going to be out of town for a month, so I offered to sublet my apartment at a discount and let him use my car to make his move smoother. Great start.
Then: hiccups.
I was going through some unforeseen health issues and some foreseen but still horrible romantic-relationship problems. The stress was killing me. Almost literally. I wish I were being dramatic. I was on heavy meds that were making me nauseous and loopy, so two days before he came to town, I asked if I could sleep on the couch for an extra few days. He mistook that to mean I was being flaky and, out of fear, almost backed out on me last minute. I reassured him. He stayed.
Then: When I was gone on my month-long trip and he was staying at my place, he texted to say my car’s tags were expired. He was curt. He was “not comfortable using it.” Understandable. I apologized, but it fell on deaf ears. Between his work-onset stress, move-onset stress, and my perceived “flakiness,” I can only assume he was at his wit’s end. Again: I don’t know. He won’t tell me. I imagine he doesn’t think I’m worth the effort. I imagine he thinks I’m irresponsible. It’s all projection. Projection is poisonous. But at this point, it’s the only version of him I have.
Here’s where I step in to double-down on myself: What the fuck, Nat? You’re an adult! Replaced the tags on your car! Make sure everything is in order before your friend stays at your place if you really care about him! The tags were sent to my parents’ house. Why didn’t I make sure they were forwarded to my place in time? Between the relationship stress and the health issues, I’d let my life oxidize around me; ignoring paperwork, missing deadlines. My friggin PASSPORT expired when I was abroad on that month long trip. I was failing in FLYING colors.
My friend always had an issue with Los Angeles. It’s hard to have a healthy relationship with this city. That was something we bonded over when we first met. That, and both playing soccer for highfalutin colleges. He played for Yale. That’s important because our backgrounds bred similar personality traits. I can’t speak for him, but what I observed as his friend was a similar achievement-based neurosis that he was untangling, through comedy. He’s a comedy writer, too. He let me stay at his place in New York when I went for a month of stand-up last year. I was trying to repay the favor. I was failing. My fault my fault my fault…
He needed a solid support system when getting to LA. I was trying support him when my own beams were busted. I needed support, too. Desperately. But I didn’t think I deserved to ask for it, because I was letting him down.
I hated myself, I hated him for not understanding that this time wasn’t representative of me as a person. I didn’t deserve this. I wanted him to know: I didn’t think he “deserved” this either. The extra stress I caused him. My not deserving was separate of his not deserving.
Does anyone deserve anything?
I fucked up.
I’m sorry.
Interlude: Driving Drunk(ish)
+5 Bad Person Points — Do you remember your tally?
What’s the protocol—for driving when you’re drunkish?
Not drunk. Never drive drunk! Don’t even think about it. Just: almost drunk.
Maybe you’re not even almost-drunk. Maybe you’re just tired. I mean, it’s 1 AM. So, yeah. “Tired.” That post-drunk-not-drunk-end-of-party mental daze. I’m driving from Hollywood back to the east side. (Pretty sure) I’m fine. Is it okay to be driving because Google maps says it’s just 13 minutes ‘til I’m home safe?
Advice: never drive when you’re drunkish. The colors of the stoplights are too liquid. The yellow of the street lamps slips off the posts. Spreading puddles on the street. Don’t drive when your world is water. Yellows into reds into greens—go!
Green! Go! Go go go!
Where am I going?
What if I just —
What if I just drove straight into that wall?
The wall that I’m coming up on. Right now. Right there. The wall that’s just before the turn onto my street. We Found Love by Rihanna is screaming from my speakers and I’m thinking about the victory that would be releasing my car into that wall.
Would my spirit (trapped inside my body) (just an orb of light and consciousness) be released through the cracks in my broken bones? If/when I drove straight into the wall?
We found love in a hopeless place… We found love in a HOPE… LESSS… PLAAACE…
This song reminds me of college parties. Of sticky floors, in the frat where my then-boyfriend lived. Reminds me of the all-encompassing heat/sex/life/love between he and I. Wondering: Does every first love feel like Too Much? It needs to be capitalized, the feeling. First Love. Too Much. My “Then Boyfriend.”
I think about his life out there now: kid, wife, house.
I think about my life in here now: liquid, drunkish, wondering.
I don’t land on a conclusion, between the two lives. His: projected, pieced together from hearsay. Mine: as I know it.
What am I talking about?
The WALL. There she is. I’m approaching. FAST. If I drive straight through it, I’ll be free. Or maybe, I’ll just be done? Is that the same thing? My thoughts slip off the posts. Puddles in the street. You shouldn’t make decisions when your world is water—
I turn past the wall, as if she never temped me.
I park in front of my apartment. Brain glazed. Typing this section of the Sunday newsletter into my Notes app on my phone. Considering: maybe a flesh-and-bloody explosion of spirit-from-body isn’t the release I need.
No; it’s the ecstasy of releasing the wheel.
It’s out of my hands. Everything. It’s out of my control.
The End of Killing Time
Always writing myself as the antagonist.
A long time ago, I wrote a draft of a movie called Killing Time.
It’s about a brother (Ant) and a sister (Kat) who are dead and stuck in purgatory. The leads are based on my brother Anthony and myself. Ant’s as chill as Andy from Parks & Rec; a lovable, huggable boy-man, just like my real-life brother. Kat’s as intense and detail-OCD as Sherlock Holmes from any Sherlock Holmes movie, Benedict Cumberbatch and beyond; she’s not as huggable of a character, just like… me? In real life? At least, that’s how I saw myself at the time.
The whole movie, Ant is much better at accepting his fate than Kat is. He’s at peace with being dead. Kat struggles against their reality, hell-bent on figuring out WHY they died. Did they deserve it? It’s a too-late-murder-mystery. Near the end of the movie, there’s a scene that goes like this:
EXT. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PLAYGROUND - NIGHT.
Ant is eating pizza flavored Pringles. Kat is pacing, serious as a businessman.
KAT
There has to be a why.
ANT
Why what?
KAT
A why we died. Why I died. You didn’t deserve it. I’m sure of that.
ANT
I mean, babies die all the time.
Ant shoves a four-inch tall stack of Pringles into his mouth.
KAT
Are you calling me a baby?
ANT
(mouth full)
I’m calling babies people who didn’t deserve to die. So, maybe we didn’t deserve to die. Maybe it just… happened.
KAT
You didn’t deserve to die.
ANT
Are you calling me a baby?
KAT
Yes, kind of! You have dimples! You’re adorable! And I? I’m—I suck. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t suck, but I do? I’m selfish. Ask anyone. People told me all the time, when we were alive. “You’re selfish.” “All you care about is work.” I didn’t make enough time for other people. I never had kids. I just—I know I deserved it…
Kat breaks into tears. Ant bites down on another stack of Pringles, trying to be quiet. The crunch is as muted as he can manage.
KAT
I know that you DIDN’T deserve it and I feel horrible that I dragged you down with me. And I’m hoping that in finding why, then maybe - maybe… I have this irrational hope that I can find a loophole I can squeeze you back through, I don’t know— A PORTAL?! So you can live again. Be reborn!
ANT
So you are calling me a baby.
Kat can’t stop crying.
KAT
I’m a fucking baby—
Ant grabs Kat by the shoulders.
ANT
KAT! SHUT UP. The only selfish thing you said was assuming I’m an MPC in your video game.
Kat sniffles. Blank stare. What?
ANT
If we died because you deserved it, that makes you the main character in the Matrix and that makes me just some nobody that was accidentally dragged down with you! SO lame. If there’s a reason you died, then there’s a reason I died or else I’m just a bot in your world.
Ant holds out the Pringle can like a baton.
ANT
You’re wrong about fate and you’re wrong about sour cream and onion being the best flavor. It’s pizza, no questions.
Kat hesitates. Sticks her hand in the tube and grabs a chip. Eats it.
KAT
I don’t know about best, but it’s better than I thought.
ANT
So what if there’s a why? We died. We’re still dead. And that’s okay because it has to be.
I wrote this a while ago. Back when I… thought I deserved to die? No, not exactly. I just thought that between my brother (one of the kindliest souls I ever did meet) and myself, I would be the one between us who caused our misfortune.
I don’t think that anymore.
Well. That’s 90 percent true. I have my moments. Where I’m too hard on myself. Where I blame myself for blameless things, where I look for meaning, justice, and/or reasons where there aren’t any to be found. But I’m learning to just eat the Pringle. Philosophically speaking.
Karma: Revisited
There’s a solipsism in believing that bad things happen to you because you deserve it. Believing your existence to have enough gravity to collapse buildings. Who do you think you are?!
I read this quote from Yung Pueblo (who has one of my favorite Substacks, you can check it out here) with some wise words on the matter that are a soft pushback on Jim Harbaugh’s shouty quote:
“Embracing your evolution leads to profound changes. The depth of your healing and growth is primarily revealed through the transformation of your behavior. It is also apparent in the decreased feeling of tension in your body and an emergence of tranquility in the way you move through life. The innermost change is that your mind feels less like a turbulent storm and your symphony of emotions spends more time ranging between peace and empowerment. There is nothing flawless about the period of your life that starts after you completely accept responsibility for your evolution – there are still hard moments, setbacks, massive challenges, hard decisions and heavy emotions that will pass through you. Even so, there is a slow change that manifests in your vibration, your energy starts emitting with a brighter radiance and eventually you will see that these positive changes are becoming your new normal.”
My Lost Friendship: Revisited
I’ll admit: I want to screenshot this whole article and tag him. I want to get social media psycho ex with it, and this shit ain’t even ROMANTIC.
It’s weird. I’ve had at least five dreams where we reconcile. Only to wake up and know: we haven’t. Only to wake up and imagine: he doesn’t care.
I’ll admit: I’ve cared about lost friendships for the wrong reasons before. I’ve hated being disliked by someone because I hate being disliked; not because I gave any real shit about the person doing the disliking of me.
But this time? You, my lost friend? I miss YOU. I wish we could settle this the comedy way: I’ll roast battle your ass right now. I wish, I wish.
I miss our friendship, not the idea of friendship.
That feels like it has as much integrity as giving God $0 to bump up my grade.
Time to Find Out: Are You a Bad Person!?
(*Poll will close after one week!)
If you scored anywhere between 1-25? Throw your points in the trash.
25-50? Throw your points in the trash.
50-75? Throw your points in the trash.
75-100? Okay, I’m kind of concerned. Give me your address so I can alert the authorities. But also? Throw your points in the trash.
🎶🎶🎶 Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days 🎶🎶🎶
I’m not here to sentence you to believe anything about yourself.
Take it up with the church 😘😘😘
Until next week,
xoxo
nat
Extra Credit: Send Me a Story About Karma!
Tell me about a time that you worried you deserved / didn’t deserve something that happened to you. Is life unfair? Or way too good to you? I WANNA KNOW!
Email me at nat@greatjobnat.com. I’d love to share your story :)